Go on, Ralph.'
'U'se has whik-sky?' the slobberer asked, his dialect even heavier
than Mary's. Use has 'backky?'
'Yes, yes, plenty whisky and plenty smoke, but not until you have
these wretched things off!' Impatient. Perhaps afraid, as well.
Roland cautiously rolled his head to the left and cracked his
eyelids open.
Five of the six Little Sisters of Eluria were clustered around the far
side of the sleeping John Norman's bed, their candles raised to cast
their light upon him. It also cast light upon their own faces, faces
which would have given the strongest man nightmares. Now, in the
ditch of the night, their glamours were set aside, and they were but
ancient corpses in voluminous habits.
Sister Mary had one of Roland's guns in her hand. Looking at her
holding it, Roland felt a bright flash of hate for her, and promised
himself she would pay for her temerity.
The thing standing at the foot of the bed, strange as it was, looked
almost normal in comparison to the Sisters. It was one of the green
folk.
Roland recognized Ralph at once. He would be a long time
forgetting that bowler hat.
Now Ralph walked slowly around to the side of Norman's bed
closest to Roland, momentarily blocking the gunslinger's view of
the Sisters. The mutie went all the way to Norman's head,
however, clearing the hags to Roland's slitted view once more.
Norman's medallion lay exposed - the boy had perhaps waken
enough to take it out of his bed-dress, hoping it would protect him
better so. Ralph picked it up in his melted-tallow hand. The Sister
watched eagerly in the glow of their candles as the green man
stretched to the end of its chain. . . and then put it down again.
Their faces droop in disappointment.
'Don't care for such as that,' Ralph said in his clotted voice. 'Want
whik-sky! Want 'backky!'
'You shall have it,' Sister Mary said. 'Enough for you and all you
verminous clan. But first, you must have that horrid thing off him!
both of them! Do you understand? And you shan't tease us.'
'Or what?' Ralph asked. He laughed. It was a choked and gargly
sound the laughter of a man dying from some evil sickness of the
throat an lungs, but Roland still liked it better than the giggles of
the Sisters 'Or what, Sisser Mary, you'll drink my bluid? My
bluid'd drop'ee dead where'ee stand, and glowing in the dark!'
Mary raised the gunslinger's revolver and pointed it at Ralph. 'Take
that wretched thing, or you die where you stand.'
'And die after I've done what you want, likely.'
Sister Mary said nothing to that. The others peered at him with
their black eyes.
Ralph lowered his head, appearing to think. Roland suspected hi
friend Bowler Hat could think, too. Sister Mary and her cohorts
might, not believe that, but Ralph had to be trig to have survived as
